Conversations with Gorbachev: On Perestroika, the Prague Spring, and the Crossroads of Socialism

Mikhail Gorbachev and Zdenek Mlynar were friends for half a century, since they first crossed paths as students in 1950. In 1993 they decided that their conversations might be of interest to others and so they began to tape-record them. From reminiscences of their starry-eyed university days to reflections on the use of force to "save socialism" to contemplation of the end of the cold war, here is a far more candid picture of Gorbachev than we have ever seen before.